


Clinging To A Mountain

by BloodiedRose



Series: Broken Crown [2]
Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Science, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Season/Series 01, Suicidal Thoughts, discussions of Genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9281831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: The Doctor arrives, and manages to pick up a lot of pieces. But not even a miracle man can completely put them back together again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings for references to a decomposing corpse and Matteusz being thoroughly unimpressed by the Doctor. There are also references to previous Doctor Who events, such as the Sycorax invasion and Eight, Fitz, and Anji. Also, the Doctor may be slightly out of character because I have little experience writing Twelve.

If Matteusz learned anything for the past month it was that- no matter how impossible it seemed, no matter how hard it became- life goes on. The sun rises in the morning, it sets in the evening, and you just end up joining in with it eventually. He had returned to school shortly after Quill had returned, newborn baby in tow. It had turned out she _had_ called the school to explain their absence, something about a combined dreck of trauma and some nasty illness that plagued teenage boys, though she claimed that her willingness to call constantly was becoming more strained every day. So Matteusz had returned to school.

It was a relief to get out of the house. The air had tasted good and even the biting cold as autumn began its fade into winter was a relief after spending so long inside. Tanya had said only a few words to him. They had attempted to hold a longer conversation, but their thoughts were so heavily consumed by That Which Must Not Be Spoken that it was near impossible to talk about anything at all. The closest they had managed was him asking how her family was doing- he had remembered her loud complaints about what to get two eighteen year olds for their birthday a few months ago, so it had been a small relief that she had not been at risk of going into the system. Or worse, joining him in the ‘technically homeless’ camp.

Ram had ignored him. Once they had caught each other’s eye by accident and Ram had looked disgusted. Matteusz had realised one night what Ram must have seen. No context, no explanation, just running into the auditorium to see his friend (ish?) essentially murder his girlfriend. If it had been the other way around, if he had seen April kill Charlie and Ram stand by her anyway, he would have hated them both as well. But Ram looked sad and alone. It seemed he had driven his friends away after Rachel, unable to explain his grief when he could instead spend time with people that just knew. Matteusz felt sorry for him. No matter what Ram had said while holding the Meteor of Truth, Matteusz had liked to think they were friends. He hated to think one of his friends was alone, girlfriend stuck in the body of the creature who killed his father and may or may not be communicable with anyway. 

He had asked for double of every piece of homework, and wrote down detailed notes of things that the teacher’s explained, in the vain hope that Charlie would end up coming back soon. Matteusz wanted to see Charlie’s exasperation as they tried to go through English history and his sheer confusion when they tried to read Shakespeare. Apparently the translator the Doctor had implanted in his head (which was a story Matteusz still was not entirely certain he wanted to hear) had only been set to 21st Century English, for reasons which Charlie could not fully understand and sounded to Matteusz a lot like ‘well something went wrong so I’ll make it up and hope the traumatised aliens believe it’. Matteusz had at least a rudimentary knowledge of Shakespeare (and if not, could google plot summaries in his native language) while it had at one point driven Charlie to tears. It was how they met, which may not have been a good omen for what eventually became of their relationship. 

Matteusz especially wanted to tell Charlie everything they had learned in physics. Actually learned, because Quill was on pregnancy leave (he was not entirely sure just how she managed that, considering the Headmistress had gone missing). He was almost hoping that Baby Quill would stay young for the rest of his high school career, but he knew that would soon backfire. Especially because she was a quiet but not especially sleepy baby. Some nights Matteusz was sure that if she had not given birth to her, Quill would have done something highly immoral and definitely illegal. 

Motherhood was strange on Quill. She had not officially named her daughter, though Matteusz suspected that she had done so and had just deemed them unworthy of knowing what it was. But Baby Quill was all he could think of, so that was what she was called. For the first few days, he had begun to call her a myriad of names in the hope that one would stick, but after the tomato thrown at his head (a disgusting vegetable [Quill refused to refer to it as ‘fruit’ and had been disgusted when he corrected her] that was also a surprisingly useful projectile, apparently) Matteusz had stopped. So Baby Quill it was. 

Baby Quill in her nursery in a room in the house that decidedly had _not been there before_. Matteusz had checked. An alien (ex?) boyfriend and his alien (former?) bodyguard and her alien baby had been fine enough for Matteusz, but rooms appearing where there had been no rooms before was just _weird_. Especially seeing as he was still camped out in the living room. He had stopped being able to feel his back about three weeks ago. Magic room creating technology would have been rather handy. But the nursery was only small (some days he could swear it was getting larger), with the crib and baby equipment and bare walls. Well, they had started with bare walls. 

It had begun with a small flower. Pink, somewhat similar to a feather, and definitely nothing like what Matteusz could recognise. It had appeared in the night while Matteusz and Quill had been sleeping. But not Charlie. Matteusz was not sure that Charlie did sleep anymore. The rare times he had been able to see the other housemate Charlie had circles under his eyes so dark that Matteusz thought black eyeshadow would have been a lighter colour. His eyes themselves were still rimmed with red, but they were alert. It was all he would get the chance to see, before Charlie ran upstairs and into his room. Quill had even dubbed him their personal ghost in the attic. 

Charlie had not improved much. He showered now, and the glasses of water Matteusz left for him had turned into bottles. Once Matteusz had been walking home from school on a warm day and even saw Charlie’s bedroom window open. But he had not come downstairs. He still walked as if he was not worthy of being on the planet beneath his feet. And on bad days he screamed. Screamed so much that Matteusz still marvelled that the neighbours had never rung the police to report a murder. It was awful. One night Quill had even gagged him while Matteusz had been forced to hold down his limbs. Charlie’s fingernails had been caked with blood and his chest covered in scratches as if he had tried to claw inside. For the next few nights, Charlie had stared silently into space as they restrained him to the bed.

But still, every morning, there was something new on Baby Quill’s walls. Something Rhodian, something Quill, and after one night a planet Earth hanging in the sky where the moon should be. It sprawled around the room, bright colours in soft hues. Opening the door felt like stepping into another world. Matteusz felt a twinge in his heart every time, a longing for a planet that he had never been to and would never see. He could not imagine what it would feel like to Charlie and Quill. Perhaps that was why Charlie did it. He had no photos of his home, so he would paint from memory so that Quill’s child would have one piece of her homeland. No matter how small it was. 

That room was the only proof Matteusz had that Charlie was still alive. That the world had not ended, their lives had not ended, that they were keeping on. It was Matteusz’s favourite room in the house. If only it was actually meant to be there, and had not appeared suddenly the day after Quill had returned home, and was clearly going to end up trying to kill them at some point because that was what everything that had ever been in their lives tried to do. It was probably ridiculous to think that there were aliens who pretended to be nurseries, but Matteusz no longer had faith in the universe to maintain some semblance of normalcy. 

Of course, normalcy had little place in Matteusz’s life anymore. It had reached the point where nothing could surprise him. It was on a Friday afternoon when Matteusz had begun demolishing a bag of crisps (the one upside of what seemed to be a planet wide sweet tooth was that Matteusz and his fondness for savoury junk food was largely left untouched), when a loud creaking rang through the living room as the blue box appeared from thin air. Matteusz just continued to scroll through youtube on his phone. 

There had been a series of bangs that came from inside the TARDIS. Some more bangs. And then the Doctor was poking his head out of the doors. 

“You wouldn’t have to have a microwave, would you?”

“Is above the fridge,” Matteusz had replied, pointing to the kitchen. The Doctor had nodded before running to the kitchen and unplugging the device. He ran back into the TARDIS with the microwave and the doors closed behind him. There was another series of bangs, followed by the unmistakable sound of electricity and a yelp. The Doctor came out again, and plugged the microwave back into the wall. It did not seem to be working as the Doctor made a small sound of disappointment and began to point his light thing at it (the Doctor had called it something, but Matteusz had been too concerned with the alien army they had been fighting). 

“You still look the same age, and the technology hasn’t changed, so I hope I’m not too late.”

“You are,” Matteusz replied. He wanted to be angry. There had been some nights where he had been furious at the mysterious man, this hero who had swept in and made a group of teenagers guardians of the Earth and genuinely expected them to be able to handle that level of responsibility. Matteusz wanted to send him upstairs, to show him April, to take him to the tombstones of Tanya’s mother and Ram’s father. To shake him and yell ‘where were you?!’. But now he was simply exhausted. He had no more anger left. “I could never understand why you were always meant to come in strife, but also always be late.”

“Did Charlie tell you that? He isn’t wrong, but-”

“No,” Matteusz said, closing youtube and getting to his feet. Charlie had never told him what had happened when the Doctor rescued them. It had taken him a long time to understand that he did not need to. “My Grandmother did.”

That had been a man with dark and wavy hair, a young English man with a German name and an Indian-English woman by his side. His Grandmother had been stalked by an infestation of what she described as ‘talking rhinos on two legs’. The man and his companions had saved her from being a collateral victim in their attempt to find a serial killer that had, unknown to her, hid in his Grandmother’s purse. His family had originally written her tales off as fairy stories. Until, of course, she, Matteusz, and his mother had ended up standing on the roof for half a day. That had been a fun Christmas. 

Even when he had come out to her, she had connected it to the man in the box. The young male companion had always been Matteusz’s favourite. Apparently he had been the only one to comfort his Babcia when she was understandably quite upset about being hunted by talking Rhinos. And he was also apparently head over heels in love with the man in the box. That seemed to be a recurring theme- Matteusz had listened when Charlie spoke of the Doctor, and would have felt a twinge of jealousy if he was not so familiar with the idolised crush. Instead, he just laughed at how adorably flustered Charlie would get when speaking of his hero, and kiss him.

It was not until Charlie explained the process of regeneration that Matteusz had connected his Grandmother’s mysterious man with Charlie’s legendary Doctor. After all, how many men could there be who travelled through time and space in a big blue box? Matteusz had been willing to believe there was two, but that was before he knew that the one man could have many faces. Unless there were indeed many men, who just chose to share a title and a TARDIS while fighting alien threats. But who was not there to keep you from becoming a threat yourself. 

“Charlie rang. Something about a mishap involving a human soul and an alien.”

“Charlie called you?” Matteusz was almost certain that Charlie had become incapable of forming sentences. When he made sounds, it was nonsensical, but when he could be understood he was mute. Or perhaps Charlie simply could not speak around Matteusz. Charlie had joked sometimes that Matteusz made him speechless. That the translator in his mind could not comprehend what he wanted to say. But that was out of love; this was out of guilt. 

“He did.” The microwave was working again. “He was much quieter than usual, so I thought I should come anyway.”

“He did not try call you before?” Matteusz had thought only Quill had been given the Doctor’s number, and that was why Charlie had not attempted to reach him. But maybe he could have stopped all of this, but he didn’t. The situation had escalated; he doubted Charlie had even thought of using the cabinet before entering the auditorium and seeing it there. Maybe he simply hadn’t thought the problem could not be solved easily. Or maybe he had been hoping it would so that he could use the cabinet anyway.

“He may have, but I was in a bit of trouble with some people wanting to blow up a sun.”

Right. Because a galaxy was far more important that a single planet. Than the sanity of a teenage boy who had already been put through far enough. There were many people dying every minute on Earth- there must be at least the same number of calamities happening throughout the universe. The Doctor could not be there to stop every one. But why couldn’t he have stopped this one?

“I think he wants… April died. She woke up in the body of the King, C… Carek-”

“Corakinus,” the Doctor supplied, and Matteusz nodded. “Well that is strange. It must have been something to do with the heart. It could not sustain both of them when damaged, so it stopped supporting April first but brought her soul in with it to Corakinus’ body after his soul was already gone.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No, I’m just making this up as I go along. But it’s probably something like that.” The Doctor looked around the room and frowned. It seemed as though he had just realised that Matteusz was the only one there. “Where is everyone?”

Far away. Separated to the far corners of the universe in soul if not in body, and doing their best to get their bodies as close to that point as they could. Each drowning under what happened and fearing what could. Dealing with the loss of their parent, their love, their body, or their morality and people and everything they ever held dear. 

“Is a school day,” Matteusz replied instead. “And Quill has gone to the supermarket.” The Doctor just nodded in response, before plopping down on the couch next to where Matteusz had been sitting. Matteusz tried to think of what to do. He had experience entertaining aliens, but those aliens were not nearly as old as Charlie claimed the Doctor to be. And he wanted to keep him distracted. The idea of the Doctor finding out what they had done made him sick with shame. Charlie’s desperation for the Doctor’s approval, and the fondness passed down from his Grandmother, seemed to have rubbed off on him. 

So Matteusz did what every teenager did in an awkward situation and pulled out his phone. He thumbed through his contacts and began to call Ram. There was about a minute of waiting, probably Ram leaving it in the hope that Matteusz would give up and hang up the call. He seemed to realise that Matteusz wasn’t going to end the call, and the phone clicked to signal that Ram had picked up.

“This better not be another alien invasion,” Ram said. He almost sounded as if he had been asleep. It was a tiredness that settled into your bones they all shared.

“No. Do you know where April is?”

“She doesn’t need you lot bothering her!” Ram all but shouted. “Especially not after what he did.”

Matteusz could hear the venom in Ram’s voice and his heart broke knowing that someone could direct so much hatred at Charlie. After so long, he doubted that explaining what had happened would be able to fix how Ram felt. He had thought it too a few times. A real friend would not shoot their best friend in the stomach. No matter what the reason was. But Matteusz had to put that aside for now.

“The Doctor is here,” Matteusz said and he heard the quiet gasp from the other end of the line. “He thinks he might be able to help her.”

“Bring him over to my place, yeah?” Ram said after a moment of silence. His breath was shaking. Matteusz knew how painful hope could be. “And don’t.... Don’t let him come. Please.”

“Is okay.” It wasn’t okay, because Matteusz knew that if this worked Charlie would be forced to see April’s face, look her in the eye as if he hadn’t done the same thing when he killed her. “Charlie is sleeping.”

Charlie wasn’t though. He could hear the slight creak of the loose banister. Charlie could probably hear everything. Maybe he wanted to go. If Charlie did, Matteusz was sure that after what he had just said Charlie probably would not feel welcome. He hoped that Charlie’s sensitive hearing- enough so that a shot from a human made gun caused him pain- had not allowed him to hear what Ram had said. It was bad enough that one could easily guess.

“Ram wants us to come to his place. Then he will take us to April.” Matteusz slid his phone into his pocket, slipped his jacket on, and grabbed his keys. The Doctor bounded to his feet. He was surprisingly agile for a man who appeared to be in his fifties (and was supposedly over a thousand. Matteusz was glad that it wasn’t nine thousand. Ram would have a field day). Matteusz went into the corridor and leaned up the stairs.

“Charlie! We will be back as soon as we can!” Matteusz tried to say more, but it caught in his throat. Call if you need anything. I lo-

The Doctor followed Matteusz out the front door, and it was only when they were leaving that Matteusz realised- the Doctor had been sitting directly in front of the cabinet. Leaving that thought for another time (did he know it wasn’t empty? Did he know it was empty know? Did he just appreciate alien religious artefacts?) and led them out the door. He looked above to Charlie’s balcony, where he could have sworn he saw a hand quickly pull closed a gap in the curtain.

“I don’t remember meeting your Grandmother,” the Doctor said after ten minutes of walking in silence. He did not seem to be a man who enjoyed silence when in the company of others. 

“You have met many people,” Matteusz replied.

“I like to think I have a good memory.”

“Oh really? How old are you?” Charlie had told him it was always changing. That there could be a Doctor who remembered you but was claiming to be older the last time you met him than he was now.

“...I’m a time traveller. It’s hard to keep track of birthdays when you never experience a linear year.” He seemed offended. “And anyway, birthdays are hard to keep track of. People though- people are important. What was her name?”

“Beatrycze Szmanda. She was being chased by Rhinos.”

“Rhinos? Judoon! They were the ones who put that hospital on the moon, you know.” He scrunched up his face. “I don’t remember seeing them on earth, though.”

“You had wavy hair. Travelling with man named Fitz and woman named Anji.”

The Doctor looked sad at hearing those names. It seemed that those people, whoever they were, were gone now. Though Matteusz supposed that most of the people in the Doctor’s life were gone. He was a time traveller after all. The Doctor swallowed his sadness as if it were a pill, and looked brighter again.

“Ah yes, one of my unfortunate regenerations. Forgot everything back then! Probably would have forgotten my own name if everyone hadn’t reminded me. Well, I actually ended up forgetting that too. You friend does live far away, doesn’t he?”

“Not much longer,” Matteusz replied. They continued the walk in silence. 

Ram was waiting for them on the doorstep to his house. He was glancing down at his phone nigh on constantly, and every so often rapidly sent a text. Tanya was waiting there with him. Her eyes widened when she saw the Doctor but she quickly rectified her expression into a small smile. She waved at Matteusz. Ram did not look up from his phone.

“Will April be coming to us?” Matteusz asked. 

“Yes,” said a voice from behind them. April was hiding in the shade of a tree, Corakinus’ body corporeal but not in it’s solid form. He could see through her to the bark she was in front of. Her eyes were haunted. Sadness ached through them in a way that Matteusz had never seen on her- not during detention, or when she was fighting with her Dad. Not even when she had died. It was a different sadness to the one he saw in Charlie, but he could tell it weighed on her in a similar way. 

“Ah.” The Doctor pointed his laser pointer at April and scanned her from her not-head to her not-toes. “You do seem to have found yourself in a pickle.”

“Can you fix it?” Ram asked. His leg was bouncing and being dug into by the jagged edges of his fingernails from where he had bitten into them. 

“Of course! A small temporal displacement combined with a sufficient charge should be enough to shift the soul out of that body. Provided we have something to put it into.”

“Do you still have your body?” Matteusz asked April. She bowed her head.

“I do but… it’s not exactly… well…”

“It’s been over a week,” Tanya said. “Stick her back in that thing and the school’s going to freak out about the rise of the zombies.” 

“Tanya!”

“Well, it’s true!”

“-Well it’s nothing a little bit of cloning won’t fix,” the Doctor interrupted.

“Cloning?!”

“A cloned zombie alien? I think that’s a bit far-”

“ _Tanya!_ ”

“Will it work?” Matteusz asked.

“Nothing works unless you try it!” The Doctor replied, turning around to get- something. He stopped. “Ah, I seem to have left my TARDIS at your house. I’ll be right back.”

They watched in silence as he bounded down the road. There was not much to say. Empty reassurances for April maybe, that this would definitely work and then everything would be fine. One thing would be a little less worse than it was before. But nothing would be fine. Possibly never again. 

The silence dragged on until the whining of an appearing TARDIS echoed through the air. It crushed the grass beneath it as the blue box formed. The Doctor popped his head outside.

“Well, come in then!”

It was… weird. Like the beginning of a bad joke- ‘four traumatised teenagers, one trapped in the body of an alien and holding her rotting corpse, walk into a police box’. A box that had an interior best left not thinking about. And could quite frankly do with some better lighting. The Doctor began to lead them down a few corridors as if they were the lost boys and he was Peter Pan. 

“How large is this place?” Ram muttered.

“I feel like this should be donated to science. Could solve a small thing called the housing crisis,” Tanya said. It was a strange and frankly depressing thought. This box was bigger than anything they would ever be in again. Matteusz felt like his entire flat could fit inside the room they had entered through. Though maybe his flat utilised similar technology. He wondered if he should ask the Doctor about the magically appearing nursery.

They entered what looked like a medical bay. Unlike the corridors and rooms they had passed through, this was brightly lit. Matteusz felt slightly comforted that the med bay in an alien spaceship looked exactly how he pictured it in his head. Everyone stood back as April lay her former body down on the table. The Doctor stabbed a small device into the arm and then injected it into a pod.

It only took a few minutes for part of the pod to hiss open, revealing the face of a sleeping April. She looked exactly like she had before she died. Her cheeks even had a hint of blush, and her lips were parted as she breathed softly. The real April promptly burst into tears. Ram wrapped his arm around her shoulders as best he could, considering that she was around seven feet tall and made of shadow. The Doctor looked awkward again. He began scribbling things on a piece of paper, before thrusting it towards Matteusz and Tanya.

“The wardrobe is down the corridor fifth door to the right. Storage is upstairs.”

“Upstairs where?” Tanya asked.

“Just upstairs. Try not to get lost.”

It was a slightly ominous farewell, but Matteusz did his best to ignore it. The ‘wardrobe’ was not that hard to find being thankfully right where the Doctor said it would. However, it was more akin to a warehouse owned by a costume department. Clothes were hanging everywhere; hats stacked to the ceiling, coats draped over trousers draped over funny little suitcases that seemed to contain shoes clearly not meant for human feet.

They managed to find some clothes for April. There was a blouse hanging from a coat hanger (that was dangling from the mouth of a suit of armour). Matteusz got into a tug of war over a jacket with a hair dryer. Tanya pulled a pair of jeans out from the grip of a pair of leather gloves. Matteusz was given them all to carry.

“How the heck do we get upstairs?” Tanya asked, and a ladder descended suddenly. 

“I think like that,” Matteusz replied.

The object they were looking for was shining brightly on a table. It looked like a lantern, encasing a golden light. Tanya reached out for it with a shaking hand. Matteusz thought she felt the same way he did- the light gave an aching emotion like it was a dying hope. It felt like sacrilege to touch it. Matteusz supposed it was a testament for how much Tanya cared for April, no matter how much they fought, because she reached out and grabbed it anyway. 

Tanya holding the object and Matteusz holding the clothes, they made their way back to the med bay. Down the stairs, through the ‘wardrobe’, five doors down and to the left. The bright lights were dazzling- upstairs had almost no lights at all. April had stopped crying, but Ram was still rubbing her back. His eyes were focused on the sleeping face in the pod.

“We brought things,” Matteusz said. He held the clothes out to April. She bent over the pod while everyone cautiously turned away. Tanya handed the object to the Doctor.

“What is it?” She asked. 

“A piece of a dying star. It should have more than enough energy to give a similar burst of energy that the soul did. Now, on the table please Miss MacLean.”

April nodded and lay down the table he indicated to. Ram reached out for her hand and squeezed it. She gave them all a shaky smile that looked out of place on the face of a Shadow Kin. And then she closed her eyes. The Doctor placed small electrodes on her chest and hooked it up to the vial holding the star. Then he hooked another to a small device that looked vaguely like a stopwatch.

“Now then. Deep breath.” The Doctor pressed a small button.

April went stiff, like she had when she had a vision of what Corakinus was doing. Her back arched and then she fell back onto the table. Panic rose in Ram’s eyes. He turned to the Doctor, possibly to yell at him, when a gasp came from the pod. The Doctor rushed over to open it fully.

There she was. April, sitting up as if she had been shocked. In her own body, with her own eyes and smile and hair. She looked exactly how she should. The Shadow Kin body she had been residing in disappeared into smoke. She ran her hands over her face, and then reached over for a mirror. April began to laugh.

“It’s me. I’m me!” She cried, sounding happier than any of them had heard her before. She pulled her hand out of Ram’s grip but only to threw her arms around his shoulders instead. After releasing her boyfriend, April hugged the Doctor as well. She grinned at Tanya and Matteusz. Her smile was so wide Matteusz wondered if her face might break. It as a moment that was surreal in the amount of happiness it contained. No wonder it could not last.

“Where’s Charlie?” April asked, looking around the room. The Doctor looked around too, and Matteusz wondered just how long he had been waiting for an answer to that question. It was Ram that stepped forward.

“Babe, he shot you. Just because you came back doesn’t change that he _murdered_ you-”

“Killed, not murdered.” April insisted. “And he only did that because I asked him to!”

“As if that makes it better! If you had asked any of us, there’s no way we would have pulled the trigger!”

“That’s why I didn’t ask you!” April cried.

“Why did you ask Charlie?” Matteusz asked. It had been bothering him for a while. If she had been so eager to die, why couldn’t she have asked Quill? Why couldn’t she have asked anyone but her best friend?

“Charlie will do what he has to. Even if it’s the opposite of what he wants to,” she replied. Her voice was shaking and her head was bowed. She looked… ashamed. “And I knew that Charlie could command them.”

“Not for long,” Tanya muttered. It was true; they had stopped attacking the humans but had instead all turned their attention to killing Charlie. Considering that they considered humans to be maggots, Matteusz wondered what they considered the remnant of a people they had already slaughtered.

“But he did control them. At that point, no one else could have. Not once they renew the taste of their bloodlust. And if they had obeyed, Charlie was the only one that could have killed me but not used the Shadow Kin to kill something else.” April turned and looked Matteusz in the eye. “I want to see him.”

They all turned to look at Matteusz expectantly. Except for the Doctor, who seemed to be doing his very best to stay as far removed from the situation as possible. As if he were a parent and the siblings were getting into a fight that had no outcome that was not a disaster. Matteusz looked at April, the bare hope that was clear in her face and eyes. And he thought back to Charlie, who was either to terrified to see Matteusz or too distraught to care. Even mentioning April’s name one night had caused Charlie to throw up the small amount of food he had eaten that day. Matteusz did not want to imagine what seeing her would do. 

“No. Not until he is ready to see you.” He turned on his heels, and left.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Are you planning on leaving my bed?” Charlie asked. The Doctor raised one impressively bushy eyebrow at him, but made to attempt to move._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm putting this chapter up early, because I am going away on holiday tomorrow for my brother's wedding and won't have much internet access. I thought I would put it up early rather than force you to wait.

Charlie watched as the Doctor and Matteusz walked down the pathway. He yearned to go with them- to rescue April, to see their friends, to just step into the sunlight again. But that was what the heroes were meant to do. The villain, who cursed the Queen to live in a hideous form and murdered innocents, was to remain locked in the dark tower for this rest of his days. Because villains were not deserving of the respite of death. 

He had thought about it. Even before he used the cabinet, or even pulled the trigger on April. Since he had been forced to watch as everyone he had ever known was slaughtered before him he had a soft darkness in his head that knew he would be better off if he had died with them. He had wanted to die with them. If anyone was to be saved, there were many people on Rhodia far more deserving than him.

It was not constant. In Matteusz’s arms he did not think about how he was living only on the breath stolen from those wondrous people. When with their friends, he did not think about how he had accepted his death and now everything felt like straining out a conclusion that really should have come sooner. They had made him feel a little bit more deserving to be alive. It was the first time that he dared think that he made people happy.

At least until detention. The disastrous detention, where everyone yelled at everyone and seemed to yell at him most of all. He could not ignore it either. On Earth he was stupid- no matter how much he observed or the nights he spent without sleep to read, he could not understand what they said. He could understand the words by virtue of the translator, but he could not understand the meanings and nuances. Even their facial expressions were wrong. His body knew more than he did- it took him weeks to realise that the way his lips curved when he experienced happiness was meant to be a smile.

Charlie tried every moment to not be strange. He knew what the humans thought of aliens, what their few contacts had been like, and did his damndest not to remind them of that. He forced himself into their mannerisms and speech patterns. Immersed himself in their popular culture and history. But no matter what he did he could not understand.

It hurt, knowing they did not like him that much. Though from what Matteusz had said it seemed that that was not uncommon for humans. That you could think terrible things about a person but still call them your friend out of a sense of obligation or because of a small aspect of their character you could force yourself to like. Charlie had hated Matteusz at times for keeping him sane, but he had never thought badly towards him. Just felt the churning in his gut and thought nothing at all. 

After that day the darkness got wider. Instead of making people happy he made them irritated, or angry, or outright _scared_ , and Charlie was tempted to grab a kitchen knife and stab it through his side. Though perhaps that would not work anymore. He was not sure where the human body had placed his heart. So instead he buried his head between his knees and yearned for home. To play his favourite piece on his instrument. To read his favourite book again, even though he had already read it eight times. To sit beneath a purple tree, look up and see three moons, and just once look into the mirror and see blue.

But that was nothing compared to now. Every shred of his home was gone. He was the last Rhodian, and he would always be the last Rhodian. Alone now, alone when he died, alone for eternity. The cabinet was just a box to remind him of his past sins and his future fate. That darkness in his mind was now all there was left. It was now more than desire. Some nights he attempted to make himself suffocate on his pillow. But to do more than that- well. He could think of how. Many ways how. Every detail formed in his head right up until the instance he died. But it took strength. He had none of that anymore.

All he had was a broken heart and an empty box. A lover who he could not bear to see and a baby he could not bear to touch. He wanted to go downstairs, to kiss Matteusz and play with Quill’s child and maybe step into the autumn air but he couldn’t. His only refuge from the emptiness inside of him was his frustration at it. It was a clawing in his mind, that if he wasn’t so pathetic he would get up and keep living. Princes did not exile themselves from the world. They stood tall even when their backs were broken. No use could be made of a weak Prince. But what use was there for a Prince with no people? 

It took him hours of willing himself to move to get the strength to do so. He felt like his body was being weighed down even by the Earth’s weaker gravity and every movement was strained as a result. The only time he could move as he was used to was when he caught a glimpse of Matteusz. Something that had once caused him so much happiness now filled him with more terror than that attack of panic during detention had. It forced him to flee from that he loved, and when he questioned why he got no answer.

Calling the Doctor had been one of the hardest things he had ever done. Using the Cabinet had been easy- make a wish, recite some lines, now you’ve committed genocide. Killing April had been harder, but it was still only one action. One small squeeze of his finger. A phone call was an entire string of actions, each one an opportunity to turn back. There was no ticking clock to keep him moving. Shadow Kin weren’t going to kill them all (again) if he did not call the Doctor. It was a miracle he had managed it. Even if he had barely been able to speak the words he wanted to say.

He had thought the Doctor would help April and then leave. But if there was one thing Charlie had learned in the past few months was that nothing in his life was easy. Humans referred to something called ‘Murphy's Law’- everything that could go wrong, would. And for Charlie, it would go wrong in a horrific and traumatising way. He had known there was a possibility that this would go wrong for him again. Part of him had hoped for it.

Going wrong and going bizarre were very different concepts though. And for Charlie, who had spent his life being raised on stories of the Doctor- great protector, saviour of Rhodia, the warrior who healed- finding him lying on your bed while playing with his sonic screwdriver was most certainly bizarre. Charlie rubbed his eyes, but the man was still there. It was like Matteusz had once said- sometimes it’s easier just to accept strangeness.

“How is April?” Charlie asked. He hated how weak his voice sounded. It would have difficulty commanding an ant. He had been proud of his voice- deep, authoritative, precisely how a future King should sound. Now it was just feeble.

“Fine, fine. Back in a body that at least resembles her old one. They went off to give her original body a proper burial. A bit macabre if you ask me. I thought your boyfriend would have returned here, but I suppose not.”

“I don’t think he’s my boyfriend anymore,” Charlie whispered. The Doctor looked confused.

“You love him, he loves you.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s my boyfriend. Love doesn’t actually conquer all.”

“Life does not make love easy,” the Doctor agreed, and- he genuinely seemed to understand. The Doctor saw the look of confusion on Charlie’s face and chuckled. “You should meet the boyfriend I had at your age. Or maybe not, it may not go very well. We used to bicker all the time about how to bring about the change we wanted in the world. And then he developed a rather alarming tendency to murder people. Once she even gave me an army of dead cybermen.”

Charlie was sure that last sentence made sense to the Doctor, but to Charlie it was little more than nonsense. But still. He had read in magazines, little gossip columns about relationship advice that seemed like it was just words for the sake of speaking. A relationship was complicated, and some people spoke as if their relationship experiences applied to everyone in the universe. The Doctor seemed to actually know what he was talking about.

“Now you must hate them,” Charlie said. It was only to be expected. The Doctor would hate his former lover just like Matteusz would now hate Charlie. 

“No. Not once have I stopped loving them. Sometimes I think I might love them even more, because I know they need it.”

“But you’re a good man! Good people don’t love monsters!”

“You’re not a monster, Charlie.”

“I _am_ , I… I killed…”

“I know.”

Charlie felt like his heart stopped. His eyes were stinging with falling tears. Something was lodged in his throat and he did not know how to get it out. The Doctor knew what he had done. He felt ashamed. Never had he wanted to know what it was like to disappoint the Doctor- he feared the Doctor’s disapproval even more than he feared his mother’s. His worst secret had been exposed to the man he admired most in all of the universe. So he stood there, raw. Naked in his sins before the man who he had worshipped as a god. 

“You know?” He whispered, voice breaking like a dying bird.

“Yes,” the Doctor said. He did not sound angry to Charlie’s ears, but Charlie did not understand emotion. That was what everyone said. 

“Are you here to punish me?” Charlie asked. He had heard what the Doctor did to monsters. It was what they all loved about him. The Doctor would come, and he would deliver justice to those who had escaped it.

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve been doing more than enough of that to yourself.”

“But you’re the Doctor!”

“Everyone keeps saying that as if I’m supposed to know what they mean.”

“You punish the bad guys! The murderers, the tyrants, certainly the people who commit genocide! You should be locking me in a pod and sending me out to drift in space for all eternity!”

“Do I deserve that?” The Doctor asked. Charlie blinked.

“No? No of course not-”

“Even though I’ve done the same things you have?”

“That’s different! You’re the Doctor, you have _reasons_.”

“And you didn’t? Protecting lives is not a reason? It was mine.”

“But you- you said not to avenge genocide with genocide.”

“Precisely! And did you avenge? Why did you wait until you were under attack if you only wanted to avenge?”

Charlie felt drained. His shoulders slumped and his knees felt like they were going to collapse under the strain of holding him up. He wanted to go to sleep. This was probably the longest he had managed to stay awake in a while, at least when he wasn’t being haunted by his thoughts. He did not expect the Doctor to be sympathetic. They all knew what the Doctor had done to end the Time War. The stories had been passed through the universe. But the entire universe had been at stake, not one small planet. And he doubted that if he was pressed, the Doctor would be willing to do it again.

“It felt good.” Charlie whispered. His most shameful secret, one that he had expected to take with him to the cabinet. Never had he wanted to say it out loud. Yet there was a part of him that felt it was right to say it. A part of him that wanted the Doctor to know. He wanted the Doctor to know just how monstrous he was and judge him accordingly. Charlie could not bear lying to him.

“It does. What defines you is how you react to that feeling. If you were a monster Charlie, you wouldn’t shut yourself away. You’d be out there, wanting to feel it again.”

They delved into silence. Charlie could feel his eyes drooping. Every time he closed them he thought he would never be able to open them again. His legs were trembling now. If he stayed standing for much longer, they would collapse beneath him. The tears were drying on his cheeks. It was a foul feeling; he didn’t remember feeling quite so disgusting if he cried on Rhodia. Possibly because on Rhodia the eyes did not tear up at every single thing. He had been quite surprised the first time he cried in his human form. To this day he had not been able to work out a usable theory for why emotional distress would trigger a physical protection of the eyes.

“Are you planning on leaving my bed?” Charlie asked. He wanted nothing more than to crawl onto it, bury himself inside the covers and ignore the world. The Doctor raised one impressively bushy eyebrow at him, but made to attempt to move. Unable to ignore the exhaustion in his bones for any longer, Charlie made his way to the bed and lay down next to him. They both looked at the star murals Charlie had drawn on the ceiling above them. The Doctor was sprawled out and comfortable. Charlie looked as if he was trying to make himself so small that he would never be seen again.

Charlie felt confused. Part of him was delighted. The part that had dreams about the Doctor, which as a child had been delightful adventures and as he got older had become fantasies he would only share with Matteusz. He actually had shared one once, when they had been talking about their crushes. It had ended naked and panting. Charlie had felt a little bit jealous at the man that made Matteusz realise his attraction (Matteusz had tried to explain the concept of ‘sexualities’ to Charlie, which he was beginning to improve his understanding of, but ‘homophobia’ was still as befuddling as it had first been. But he could still understand the forbidden nature of Matteusz’s desires). He had wanted nothing more to claim him. It had excited him thinking that Matteusz felt the same way.

Laying next to the Doctor had once been his most ardent desire beyond all reason. Now, it felt like a perversion of innocence- lying next to the hero of his childhood after becoming the creature that haunted the nightmares of that same child. At least he had surpassed the fantasies of that child, even the fantasies he had when he began to near adulthood. He and the Doctor had something in common. The most terrible commonality two people could have. Charlie hoped that there were no more who bore it.

“How did you know the Cabinet wasn’t empty?” Charlie asked. The Doctor turned his face to him.

“Did you never wonder where the stories of me came from on your planet?”

“Honestly, I just never thought about it.”

“No. Most people don’t.” The Doctor turned his head back towards the ceiling. “I was on Rhodia, and found out that a man wanted to create a weapon. A weapon of mass destruction with powers that could be renewed almost every ten years. To do this, he manufactured a species with souls he could harvest. A species that looked just like his own; except they were grey and blue.”

“Manufactured?” Charlie croaked.

“I’m still not entirely sure how. It was a masterpiece of work, a combination of cloning, gene splicing, and something I have never seen before. It’s been so long now that you all evolved in your own way, of course. The enhanced hearing is new. Anyway, he decided that instead of wasting a natural resource, he would breed this new species like cattle and massacre them every time he needed to use it. Utterly barbaric. He had conquered two planets before I arrived.”

“What did you do?” 

“Well, very little if I’m honest. Once we learned what was going on we wanted to bring him to the Shadow Proclamation to decide on punishment, but a young Quill woman slit his throat before we could. We freed the Rhodians, and tried to make the Cabinet unusable. He had thought of that. The best I could do was make it so that only a Rhodian could use it. I had hoped that no one would dare even try. I will admit I have some difficulty predicting behaviour. They seemed to be the type to fear the thing, but I came back a few centuries later and everyone was worshipping it!”

“And you,” Charlie whispered. The Doctor grimaced. 

“I was tempted to make you leave it behind, but I knew you wouldn’t. So I brought you… here. Humans are extraordinary creatures. I hoped that one of them would be able to bring you back. Remind you how much more there is to life than the tragedies you suffered. I wanted you to move on, Charlie. You can’t do that when you’re still letting your grief crush you. I would know.”

“... Ever since that day, I feel like I’m clinging to a mountain. Some days I manage to get footing beneath me. But now it has all fallen away and my feet are dangling over an abyss. I’m trying to hang on, but I can only grip by digging into the dirt with my fingernails. My fingers are bleeding and I’m beginning to slip.”

“Then get someone to pull you up. If you can’t do it yourself, then stop pulling your hand away.”

Silence.

“Now that you have returned her to a human body, is April still Shadow Kin?”

“No.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. The last Rhodian and the last Shadow Kin. That is your punishment.”

“I am that which destroyed my people.”

“Twice over.”

“The punishment is just.”

They did not speak again after that. Charlie’s eyes drooped closed, a mix of exhaustion and something that had become unfamiliar to him. He felt safe. Downstairs, he heard the front door slam shut and things be dropped on the kitchen table. There was some thumping, and then someone went into Baby Quill’s room. Quill had always done her best in their time together to move as loudly as possible unless she wanted to hide. It had annoyed him. Now it felt comforting. A short time later, he heard the front door shut softly. Matteusz had returned home. The door to his room creaked open. Charlie cracked his eyes open to see the Doctor press a finger to his lips. The door did not close. Charlie fell asleep.

When he woke the next morning, the Doctor was gone. Charlie would think it was a dream if not for the rumpled sheets and a few sweets missing from the bedside table. There was a note on the bedside table, written in elegant Rhodian. Charlie clutched it between his fingers and looked at the time. It was nearing afternoon- he had slept for almost an entire day. Instead of the aching exhaustion he had felt before, Charlie felt rested. His stomach groaned at not having eaten. There was food waiting for him again outside his room that he ate swiftly. 

He grabbed some of his drawing pens and walked to Baby Quill’s room. He could still feel the darkness in his mind. A few more days and it would return as strong as ever. But until then… Quill was right, his room was becoming pungent. And he desperately needed a shower to clean off the grime on his skin. He had had the occasional one in the dead of night but he preferred having them in the morning. Feel the crisp morning air on fresh skin. Perhaps he could get his own water. Maybe… maybe he could even see Matteusz. Not for long, but for a few moments. But those were thoughts for tomorrow. For now, all he could do was ensure that when Baby Quill was brought up for bed, resting beneath a tree on the grass would be a bright blue box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weaponising souls seems too weird of an evolutionary quirk for me so I made it intentional. Also, the evil guy's species is extinct, he wasn't a Quill. I had to include Doctor/Master because a) I never forget an OTP and b) there are some huge similarities between Charlie/Matteusz and Doctor/Master for me. There are some things that the Master did in the EU that I could definitely see Matteusz doing for Charlie. I think The Doctor is the only one who could really help talk Charlie through what happened because he was in the same position with The Moment. Which is also why I think The Doctor brought them to Earth, because it was the human companions that helped him reconnect to life. 
> 
> As always, comments are welcome! I love hearing from you amazing people :)

**Author's Note:**

> When trying to figure out why Matteusz was so chill at the time, I thought it would be cool if he was kind of the reverse Donna. She managed to avoid almost all alien incidents, so he and his family just keep getting mixed up in them. This chapter was largely just meant to get April her body back and I tried to come up with something that sounded vaguely plausible. I hope Ram isn't coming across as too jerkbag-y. I do think that his and Charlie's relationship is the most damaged after the events of the finale, simply because Ram doesn't have the full picture and even once he does I doubt he can just forget what Charlie did. The 'you killed her' line isn't something that I think can be easily left behind. 
> 
> The next chapter is significantly shorter and more discussion based, but Charlie finally gets something resembling therapy via the Doctor. As always, comments are welcome!


End file.
